Uncovered: the Crime Museum's grisly exhibits

Objects from the Metropolitan Police Crime Museum are going on public show for the first time next month. Lucy Davies sifts through the often grisly catalogue of exhibits. Photographs by Daniel Stier

German tailor Franz Muller, 24, was hanged at Newgate in November 1864 for the murder of Thomas Briggs on a train from Fenchurch Street to Chalk Farm, throwing his body from the compartment. His trial at the Old Bailey was a sensation for two reasons: it was the first murder on a British train; and Muller made it all the way to New York before he was captured. As well as Briggs’s gold watch and eye glasses, the murderer also stole his tall top hat, which he later had cut down into a shorter style, either to elude recognition or for convenience on the run. The ‘Muller cut-down’, as it was known, became a fashion trend. Making death masks of criminals was considered a necessity at the time. Through phrenology – the study of how the shape or measurements of a person’s head supposedly affected their moral compass – scientists hoped better to understand the criminal mind.

Rope used to hang Mary Pearcey

In October 1890 24-year-old Mary Pearcey murdered her lover’s wife and child. Phoebe Hogg’s body was found in Crossfield Road, Hampstead, and that of her 18-month-old baby a mile away, the bloodstained perambulator nearby. Bloodstained knives and a poker, an apron and blood-spattered walls and clothing were found in Pearcey’s kitchen in Camden Town – she had also been seen walking the streets with the pram. So sensational was the coverage of the case in the press that when her wax figure was exhibited at Madame Tussaud’s soon after her execution, its unveiling generated a crowd of some 30,000 visitors. Pearcey was hanged at Newgate prison, two days before Christmas.

The Harley Street mystery

In June 1880, servants to wealthy London merchant JK Henriques complained of a terrible stink in the basement of his house on Harley Street. Police found the body of a short woman of about 40 years old in a barrel hidden at the back, under an iron cistern. The murderer had added chloride of lime to the barrel, thinking it would speed the decomposition of the body, but it didn’t work. The body was found with a fractured spine, which doctors said was a result of being pushed into the tub, and they recorded probable cause of death as a stab to the heart. The woman’s facial features had disintegrated, so she was impossible to identify and has remained so ever since. Although forensic science was yet to be properly established, the police preserved many items that might help identify the victim, including casts of her teeth, locks of her hair and the remains of her clothing.

Electric generator

Charlie and Eddie Richardson were leaders of a gang in Camberwell, south London, operating around the same time as the Kray brothers in east London. By day they dealt in scrap metal and fruit machines, but their real income came from trading stolen goods. Evidence heard at trial revealed the gang, known as the ‘torture gang’, used pliers to pull teeth and nailed people to the floor. This small Megger hand-turned generator, intended for testing circuits, was used to administer shocks to their victims. Eddie was arrested In March 1966 following a fight involving guns and bayonets at Mr Smith’s Club in Catford. Charlie and the rest of the gang were caught on the day of the World Cup final in 1966.

The acid bath murderer

John Haigh was convicted of killing six people, although he claimed to have murdered several more. A compulsive gambler, his motive was financial and he plundered his victims’ pensions and properties. While in prison for fraud during the Second World War he refined his idea of dissolving bodies in acid. His final victim was Olive Durand Deacon, a 69-year-old widow who lived in the same residential hotel as he did in London. After inviting her to his West Sussex workshop (where she had wanted to discuss her idea for manufacturing artificial fingernails) he shot her and submerged her body in an acid-filled oil drum. Police found the drum, protective gloves and some ‘sludge’, which seemed to be all that remained of the body. But a pathologist delving deeper found Durand Deacon’s dentures, which her dentist was able to identify her by, and her foot bones, from which a cast was made that matched her shoes. Haigh was hanged for murder in 1949.

Sampler cushion

Annie Parker appeared before London magistrates more than 400 times fordrunkenness. According to press reports of the time, she was ‘never out of prison more than two or three days’. While in jail she would make wonderful pieces of embroidery – one item was sold at Christie’s in 2003 for almost £2,000. This sampler, edged in Parker’s crocheted lace, is embroidered with her own hair – something the Victorians were strangely fond of doing. Parker made this for the chaplain of the Clerkenwell house of detention, where she was imprisoned for a time. She died of consumption in 1885 while in the Greenwich workhouse infirmary.

Milsom and Fowler lantern

Albert Milsom, 33, and Henry Fowler, 31, were convicted of murdering Henry Smith, a wealthy resident of Muswell Hill, London, in June 1896. Smith was known for being a reclusive miser who had pots of money secreted about his home. His body was discovered bound in shreds of blanket by his gardener. Next to the body were two pocket knives and this bullseye lantern, which police identified as belonging to Milsom’s brother-in-law. They tracked the pair to a travelling circus, where, the story goes, they were operating a waxwork chamber of horrors. The pair turned on each other almost immediately, each blaming the other for the crime, and while in custody Fowler tried to throttle Milsom. The presence of two knives convinced the jury that both were to blame. At their hanging another criminal was positioned between them so they couldn’t attack each other.

Anthropometric cards

The crime museum has about 40 of these cards, listing the weight, height, eye colour, tattoos and scars of prisoners, with their photograph. As well as insight into the physical make-up of the criminal classes, the cards contain details of their crimes and punishments, such as 12-year-old Arthur Woodbine, arrested for stealing biscuits in 1896. He was sentenced to six weeks’ hard labour and five years’ reformatory.

Handcuffs

These were allegedly used on Jack Sheppard, an 18th-century thief and hero to the working classes. According to a ghostwritten narrative of his life (Daniel Defoe is one of several names put forward as the possible author), the young carpenter had gone astray after visiting a tavern near Drury Lane. Several bouts of spoon-stealing, pickpocketing and burglary later, he made his name by escaping jail four times in 1724, fashioning ropes from prison bedclothes, climbing gates and breaking through barred doors. His fate was sealed when he raided a pawnbroker, stole a suit, a wig, rings and a watch and spent the night with two prostitutes. He was arrested the following morning and imprisoned at Newgate, where the jailers charged the public four shillings to see him. He was hanged at Tyburn, aged 22.

The Glasgow-to-London mail train was raided on August 8 1963 near Cheddington in Buckinghamshire. A 15-man gang boarded the train, which they knew contained used banknotes being sent for destruction at the Royal Mint, and forced the driver, Jack Mills, to take the uncoupled coach containing the cash to Bridego Bridge. The gang unloaded £2.5 million and hid out at Leatherslade Farm, 28 miles away, leaving in a hurry when they discovered police were on their trail. Fingerprints and objects they left behind, such as this Monopoly money from a game they were playing, were used to catch them.